Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1887-05-26
TRAINED ELEPHANTS.
SOME FACTS THAT FEW PEOPLE
KNOW ABOUT THE BIG BEASTS.

Elephants Learn Tricks Only After Long
tirely Mechanical-Trained Elephants
All Indian-Their Health.
As any one about the show can tell you, no
elephant is sent into the ring without at least
years training. Only the tamest animals,
those most used TO crowds and confusion, are
taken to start with The keepers are kept
with them constantly, and the same round of
tricks and movements that they are to go
through in the circus is followed out, day by
day. from one years end to another. Habit
and example take so strong hold in the end
that trick elephant, the keepers say, comes
in time to be mere machine. and would no
more think of cutting loose in the midst of his
performances than of stopping half way with
bag OF oats that he had stolen. Trick ele-
phants, too, as n rule, are lazy and amable
They stand in fear of the keepers whip or
hook, and watch generally in perfect submis-
sion for sign from him before making the
first motion
There is an idea abroad that elephants are
more easily trained than other ANIMALS They
have high intelligence among quadrupeds
OF course, but all trainers agree than they
learn tricks only after a long and painful
routine There is scarcely a shade of differ
enre- either, in the matter of quickness be
tween different elephants Nineteen out of
twenty will master a given trick in just about
the same length of time. And so even is the
average power to learn and hold tricks that
pairs, and even groups of six or eight for the
more complicated pieces of acting, are chosen
now to match only in size, without any ques-
tion in advance of quckness or dullness
ADAM FoRErAuGH, JR
The newest and most striking tricks shown
this year at the Madison Square garden are
the younger Adam Forepaugh's
Young Mr.. Forepaugh has been training
elephants from his boyhood and has originated
half the tricks that elephants are now doiDg
in all circuses He has a peculiar control
over the big beasts, apparently, having dis
carfed the steel prod from the first and using
nothing but light whip of rawhide
ut Is hard to tell much about ones method
of training" he said the other dav when in
terlupted in his mornings work at the big
garden. There arr no special short cuts or
| brilliant strokes about 1t. think the secret
of the whole thing is hard, patient work
Elephants, everybody knows, are intelligent
enough, but they don't take to show tricks
somehow One of our elephants had the in
genuity to steal a bag of cats a day for nearly
whole summer by pulling out tent stake
near his quarters when no one WAS looking
| llttlng the flap of canvas and grabbing bag
with his trunk FROM the pile that was kept
just outside. Then he ate the oats, threw the
bag outside, fastened the flap and put in the
stake again. Yet he was one of the dullest
at learning tricks And could never explain
it, except on the theory that he was playing
off
elephants have to be taught everything
by mere routine. They never seem to know
that they are doing anything with an end or
purpose. They could as well begin at the last
movements and work back | take green
elephant in the fall and put him in with those
trained the year before. At first he does
nothing but walk about, learning TO keep step
and march with the rest. When he is fairly
broken in | try him in some of the simpler
things-to come at command, to lie down, to
rise on his hind legs, to stand on tub. From
that on it is all an unbroken routine Every
movement has to be repeated daily till the
elephant gets the whole thing in his memory
The same thing must always be done i'll the
same order and as nearly as possible in the
same space of time. 1t would throw out every
elephant here if l changed the tricks in the
least, or even the order of them in the
clirrbF